Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I break down how Oracle’s $455 billion RPO surge is being driven by Larry Ellison’s bold vision to lead not just in AI training — but in the even larger market of AI inferencing.
Highlights
00:46 — First, Ellison talked about AI training. Then, he discussed AI inferencing, which will be much, much bigger than AI training. Ellison said that AI inferencing will be used for everything — from robotic cars, robotic factories, and robotic greenhouses, to biomolecular synthesis to come up with new drugs.
01:20 — He said, “We think Oracle is particularly well-positioned to go after this because of Oracle’s history.” He said AI inferencing is the key, and Oracle is going to succeed because it’s going to be able to provide data of multiple types for businesses that they can then use with these AI-trained models to be able to answer any sort of questions.
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02:33 — So Ellison thinks, therefore, business customers using Oracle Database and Oracle AI, Oracle inferencing, will be able to get any question answered they want, and that will also help them develop the AI agents that Oracle goes deeply into. Ellison and Oracle are redefining the whole nature of what data means, what AI means, what’s possible.
03:42 — CEO Safra Catz said she thinks that it won’t be long before Oracle has RPOs above half a trillion dollars. So they’re doing some remarkable things. Larry Ellison has always been a master of the long game. We’re really seeing this play out here, and it’s, I think, very interesting to see how he perceives these two multi-trillion dollar markets
04:15 — The Oracle way is to go after them both, AI training and AI inferencing. No doubt there’ll be lots of competitors. It’s going to be a great market — great opportunities for businesses. And as we always say, the biggest winners in the Cloud Wars are always, always the customers.
